Light as a feather

-Chapter 23-

Celestia opened her eyes finding her vision blurry, the edges of her sight etched in darkness. Casting her gaze about the room gave little in way of answers, and she found upon trying that she had no use of her magic. Her ears perked at the sound of dripping, a steady regularity that produced an echo alerting her without the need for sight that the room was immense.

“”Hello…?” She called, surprised by the sound of her own voice as it echoed off the walls. “Is anypony there?”

“I’m glad to see you are finally awake.” A voice responded. Celestia flinched whirling toward the sound only to find it was no longer coming from that direction but from another. After spinning several times, the voice sniggering at her foalish antics, she stopped her flailing, breathing heavily. “Show yourself!”

The laughter solidified directly behind Celestia. She turned one final time to find a pony; tall, massive, familiar in the darkest parts of her memory. She could not hide the tremble of fear in her voice as she spoke. “You…”

She crouched low, her wings flared, a snarl marring her otherwise elegant, though withered as of late, features as the all too familiar stallion emerged from the darkness. A smile touched his lips, his dark blue eyes glinting spitefully. “Come now Celestia,” He chided. “Such hostility is unbecoming of a princess.”

Celestia spat at his hooves. He took a moment to stare at it before flicking his eyes up to her, a reserved smile on his lips. “Use your words Celestia.” He teased. “Or have you forgotten how to speak?”

“I have nothing to say to the likes of you!” She hissed venomously. She couldn’t suppress the sudden squeak that left her lips as a tendril of dark magic snaked around her throat dragging her toward his much larger bulk. Her wings were crushed against her sides as the magic tendrils wrapped around her like coils of rope. The stallion pressed against her leaning across her neck to nibble at her ear. More than tempt her, the action repulsed her. “Tell me something Celestia,” The stallion inquired lustfully into that same ear, “How many stallions have lain with you? Of those stallion how many ever truly cared for you, truly loved you, not as a divinity but as a mare?”

“You never were one to mince words Glaze.” Celestia muttered recoiling at the bluntness of his question. He spun the alicorn to face him, staring into her eyes with his own. She turned her gaze away, looking anywhere but into his stunningly beautiful eyes. They were the reason she’d been drawn to him all those years ago, tempted in ways she would later come to regret.

“Your silence speaks volumes Celestia.” He muttered darkly dropping her onto the pillow upon which she had woken. She shoved her curiosity about his dark magic to the back of her mind for the moment daring to ask something far more pressing. “You would destroy Equestria for some petty revenge? Is that it?”

“Revenge?” He laughed turning to face her, dark wisps of unfamiliar magic, the same still wrapped around her body, leaking from his pores. She visibly withdrew as much as she was able given her restraints, the motion not failing to catch his eye. He hesitated before continuing his voice growing noticeably softer, yet despite this the angry and bitter tone remained.

“I gave you a foal Celestia!” He snapped, “A child of your flesh and my blood! I did what no other stallion dared in giving myself to you and as a reward you had me decommissioned, exiled, and for what? To save face in front of your subjects, your country!”

“What would you have had me do?” She queried refusing to be intimidated by his accusations. “I could not lower myself to stand among them! I am a princess lest you forget!”

“You are not some god to be revered!” The stallion said angrily, his voice echoing around the chamber. He softened it a bit as he saw her draw back in fear. He longed to comfort her in some small way but stubbornly pushed that notion way. “You are a mare; beautiful, powerful, commanding, ageless, but a mare all the same. You would have resisted the temptation I set aflutter in your heart were you more.”

Celestia hung her head unable to deny this fact. She had flirted with her more primal urges and been shown the error of her conduct by way of the uncontrollable acts of a rapacious stallion. She had naught to blame but herself for that terrible memory and the consequences it bore.

She kept her gaze at the floor as the stallion paced venting his anger through snorts and grunts and half mumbled words. Her thoughts fell to that colt, the one that bore her feathers on his flank, the one that gave her sister such joy, fleeting though it was. She saw naught of herself in him, yet she knew he was indeed of her flesh for she had born witness to his birth. He was not maimed by her genes as she had once feared but emerged from her womb the simplest of pony breeds; perhaps with a dormant magic, perhaps not, time had yet to tell.

And his eyes…

“You, not I, have condemned him to a life of misery Celestia!” The stallion continued snapping her from her musings. He was calmed, better composed as he went on. “The moment you shunned his existence, the very moment you choose your life over his…”

“What of your part Glaze?” Celestia interrupted daring to meet his stare. She got to her hooves, striding forward with a new found resolve, the dark bonds that held her falling away. “I have seen the hurt you have woven in him; the pain, the misery. You’ve renounced his worth, maimed him both in mind and body! You seek naught here but to console your own guilty conscience!”

“Perhaps.” The stallion conceded quietly and Celestia’s angered resolve stumbled, as did her body. Again the tendrils snaked toward her, helping her up and drawing her nearer to the dark earth pony wielding such an unnatural magic. She did not turn her gaze away this time; instead she poured all of her loathing, all of her guilt, all of her heartbreak into it. Gazing into his eyes she remembered she had loved him once, as a mare loves a stallion, and again she felt compelled to flirt with danger in its most primordial form.

His lips were unsympathetic as they met hers, the kiss they shared deep and lingering. For a moment she wondered, but that moment passed and she was left breathless and emotionally torn at the hooves of her dirty little secret. As he made to leave she called out to him, seeking answers to her final curiosity. “That magic you wield, what is it?”

The stallion glared at her a moment, his eyes bitter and sad. With a grimace he turned away his head hung low, his gaze drawn someplace beyond the hard stone beneath his front hooves. “A necessary sacrifice,” He explained vaguely his words tinted with regret, “One I swore to keep secret, and so I shall.”

--

Amber lay awake in his hospital bed, the steady ticking of the clock on the opposite wall grating on his nerves. Outside the sky was dark, sprinkled with the few stars that had yet to fall. Occasionally he would see one do just that and for a moment he thought about making a wish, but his fathers words and the throbbing ache still present in his head stopped him.

A slight sound drew his attention to the door where pale light flooded in from the hall. Fluttershy stood in the doorway, her shadow thrown across the floor. “Is it okay…” She mumbled, the remnants of tears glistening in the faint light able to reach her face, “I…I just want to…” She took a hesitant step closer, flicking her eyes up for a fraction of a moment, glancing away when they met his briefly.

“I’ve been such a fool!” She cried suddenly flinging herself forward, crossing the distance with the help of her wings, and wrapping her hooves around his neck. Startled by the brazen act from the normally docile pegasus Amber hesitated in returning her embrace as she cried quietly into his shoulder.

“Hey now, it’s okay…I’m okay, see?” Amber said gently pushing Fluttershy away from his shoulder. “Besides I’ve cried enough recently for the both of us.”

The colts smile fell as he realized how similar that statement sounded to what his father had said not hours before. It seemed they had more in common than he was comfortable admitting to himself if even their speech was comparable. Shoving his feelings aside he addressed Fluttershy, as a means of quelling his feelings as much as comforting the distraught mare.

“I thought…I thought I wouldn’t see you again.” She said softly, her voice only slightly higher than a whisper, but in the ambient silence of the hospital room her voice was almost loud. “I didn’t think I’d be able to a…apologize for how I’ve been…behaving.” She flushed faintly. “You said we could talk about…her…”

“You want to ask me about Vinyl?” Amber picked up where the mares words had dropped off. The filly gave a small nod. Amber thought a moment before speaking, a faint smile touching his lips.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me, all of you,” He began slowly, with a bit of hesitation as his thoughts trailed over all the moments he had shared thus far with his new group of friends, “but Vinyl, she doesn’t see me as somepony broken.” He flicked an ear toward the open doorway, listening intently for several brief moments. Had he heard hooves just now?

“Hell, she’s more messed up than I am on her good days.” He continued with a wry smile. “It’s just that when were together she isn’t trying to fix me, she’s simply there…because I’m there and she wants to be with me.”

Out in the hall, a pale white unicorn slumped against the wall, a bouquet of ‘get well’ flowers lying on the floor beside her. Tears rolled down her cheeks, dripping from her muzzle to pool between her hooves. She rubbed a foreleg across her eyes trying desperately to wipe them away before glaring viciously at a passing nurse, who had slowed to stare at her like she was some sort of circus spectacle. With an obstinate scowl the nurse walked on.

--

Twilight Sparkle stood alone in the courtyard, a small rectangular area centered between the separate wings of the Canterlot General Hospital, gazing curiously up at the evening sky, which appeared darker with so few stars in spite of the moon’s bright glow. Celestia may have had the power to control both the celestial bodies but Luna had no such freedom. It was only by inheritance she was able to control the moon so easily despite her sisters continued pull. Wherever she was, the solar princess had yet to relinquish her hold on it. The purple unicorn was grateful for that much, it meant her mentor, her friend, was still alive, perhaps not well, but alive.